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Review of social work governance and assurance in Scotland

The Care Inspectorate has now published its final report following the review of social work governance and assurance across Scotland.

The review took place between July and December 2024 and sought to answer the following question.

How well do social work governance and assurance arrangements support leaders to:

• Ensure statutory duties are carried out safely and effectively?
• Enable social work staff to be supported, accountable and effective in their practice?
• Assist social work staff to uphold core social work values?

We looked at all areas of statutory social work including adults, children and justice social work services across all local authority areas in Scotland. 

We heard from

• 32 chief social work officers
• 64 senior leaders at head of service or equivalent level
• 159 operational managers
• 8 chief officers of health and social care partnerships
• 8 local authority chief executives
• 3,935 staff who responded to our survey
• Reviewed 1032 documents

Key Messages

Our review found that

1. Overall, social work leaders and managers worked effectively within often complicated governance arrangements. In most cases these arrangements were well understood by staff.
2. Levels of oversight and assurance were enhanced by dedicated ‘social work governance boards’ or their equivalent.
3. Social work influence was at times more limited within health and social care partnerships where it had a less equal level of representation.
4. The role of the chief social work officer was important in promoting and amplifying the voice of social work.
5. Staff, managers and leaders felt confident to promote and uphold values within social work services. There was a strong belief in the importance of social work values to support ethical practice.
6. Overall social work assurance was mostly effective.
7. Social work services were managing significant levels of risk relating to financial and staffing resources. The impact of both of these risks was amplified in island and rural settings.
8. Overall, staff were supported to deliver effective services.
9. Most social work staff benefitted from appropriate professional supervision arrangements and received learning and development opportunities which supported them to deliver their role.

High level messages for national consideration

• Scotland’s social work services were finding the ability to match supply with demand exacerbated by increased levels of complexity. This meant that social work was at risk of being unable to fulfil its statutory duties in some service areas.
• Staff were concerned that traditional relationship-based practice was being replaced by ‘transactional’ or ‘episodic’ engagement with people and children who use services. This was particularly the case within adult social work.
• A national approach is required to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis. Social work sustainability is particularly impacted by the enduring financial position. Change is needed to support the vital role of social work services.

We would like to thank everyone who participated in the review.

Our review report was published on 6 May 2025. You can read the full report below.

• Review of social work governance report
• Press release

How we do it

Justice social work: inspection of community payback orders 

In our overview report published December 2021, we presented the key findings aggregated across all five inspections.

Between September 2018 and November 2020, we completed five inspections of justice social work services with a particular focus on community payback orders in these areas:

• Scottish Borders
• West Dunbartonshire
• Inverclyde
• Dumfries and Galloway
• Aberdeen City.

We produced an inspection guide for this activity. In summary the inspection methodology involved:

• submission of a self-evaluation by each local authority area
• review of a representative sample of relevant records of people who were or had been subject to a community payback order
• interviews with people currently subject to a community payback order
• focus groups and interviews with members of staff, partner agencies and stakeholders, and senior managers, chief officers, elected members with responsibility for community justice social work
• verbal feedback to the local authority on findings based on the analysis and evaluation of all aspects of the inspection
• publication of an inspection report for each participating local authority area that included evidence-based evaluations of key quality indicators using a six-point scale.

Community justice partnerships: supported and validated self-evaluation 

Between 2018 and 2020, we worked in partnership with His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) to support the implementation of the new community justice model through a validated self-evaluation approach. We carried out assurance activities across the following five community justice partnerships, one of which incorporated three local authority areas:

• North Lanarkshire (did not involve HMICS)
• Clackmannanshire
• Ayrshire (North, South and East)
• Shetland
• East Lothian

For more information on the supported and validated self-evaluation methodology please refer to our guidance and additional information. In summary our activity included:

• support and guidance from a strategic inspector for partnership areas to undertake self-evaluation
• submission of a self-evaluation by the partnership
• analysis of the submitted documents by the Care Inspectorate/HMICS team
• follow-up activities with the partnership to explore any areas of uncertainty (these included visits, interviews and focus groups)
• verbal feedback on the findings to each partnership based on the analysis of all the evidence gathered
• publication of the validation letter.

Community justice social work: throughcare review 

The Scottish Government established the national criminal justice Recover, Renew, Transform (RRT) programme in response to the ongoing impact of Covid-19 on the justice system in Scotland. One of the tasks of the Recovery of Community Justice and Prevention of Offending sub-group was to explore breach of licence and recall to prison. This was to further understand recall and related processes to reduce the number of people being recalled to custody, where appropriate.

In March 2021, the Care Inspectorate received a request from the sub-group to undertake a focused piece of work relating to breach of licence/recall to custody. The strategic justice team undertook a review of throughcare with a primary focus on community justice social work practice.

The review sought to:

• identify potential barriers to reintegration; and
• seek assurance that community justice social work contributions to breach and recall processes were operating as they should.

As part of the review, we also gathered the views of individuals from across Scotland who had been recalled to prison following a breach of their throughcare licence conditions.

We published a report of our findings in September 2021. The report contains more detail on the methods we used.

Our collaborative work with scrutiny and improvement partners 

We have a long-standing commitment to contribute to inspections of prisons and other institutions led by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons in Scotland (HMIPS). Over the past three years, our contribution has been led by the strategic justice team with support from other strategic colleagues as appropriate. Throughout 2020/2021, we contributed to HMIPS Covid-19 liaison activities through on-site visits and remote contact with community agencies.

Throughout 2021/2022, we will continue to work with scrutiny and justice partners to contribute to the thematic prison review of risk management, progression and early release.  

A separate piece of collaborative work will focus on the extent to which community justice partners are delivering on national priorities relating to early intervention and prevention.

In July 2023, we commenced a joint thematic review of prison-based social work, in partnership with His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons in Scotland (HMIPS). This thematic review will consider the strengths and challenges in the governance, leadership, and accountability of prison-based social work services in Scotland. The full Terms of Reference for the review can be found here. This work will conclude in April 2024.

Joint inspections of services for adults

Our approach

The Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014 sets the legislative framework for integrating adult health and social care.

Integrating health and social care services is important to ensure that people have quick access to the range of services and support they need, that their care feels seamless to them and that they experience good outcomes and high standards of support. This is particularly vital for the increasing numbers of people with multiple, complex, long-term conditions in Scotland.

Since April 2017, the Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Scotland have had joint statutory responsibility to inspect and support improvement in the strategic planning and commissioning of integrated approaches.

In 2019, the Ministerial Strategic Group (MSG) for Health and Community Care asked us to further develop our joint inspections to focus on how integration impacts on people’s outcomes, to consider the performance of the whole health and social care partnership and to ensure a balanced focus across health and social care provision.

In response to the MSG recommendation, the Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Scotland have reviewed our joint inspection methodology to answer the following question:

“How effectively is the partnership working together, strategically and operationally, to deliver seamless services that achieve good health and wellbeing outcomes for adults?”

In order to address the question over the broad spectrum of adult health and social care services, we will conduct a rolling programme of themed inspections, looking at how integration of services positively supports people’s experiences and outcomes. It’s important to note that these thematic inspections are not considering the quality of specialist care for each care group but are simply a means of identifying groups of people with similar or shared experiences through which to understand if health and social care integration arrangements are resulting in good outcomes. In this way, we’re looking at integration through the lens of different care groups which, taken together, will in time build a picture of what is happening more broadly in health and social care integration and how this is experienced by people and the outcomes achieved.

How we do it

Our inspections last for a number of months. We work closely with the partnership to co-ordinate our inspection activities.

We have a range of ways to gather information that will help us to assess how integrated services in the area are helping to improve outcomes for people and their unpaid carers. These include:

• asking for information from the partnership
• speaking to people who use health and social care services and their unpaid carers
• speaking with staff, managers and leaders across the partnership
• reading people’s records.

We communicate regularly with the partnership and keep them up to date with our findings.

After the inspection, we publish a report about our findings on the Care Inspectorate’s and Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s websites. The report explains what we have found, identifies strengths and points out areas that could be improved. We agree an Improvement plan with the partnership to address those areas.

Getting involved

The voices of people who use health and social care services and of their unpaid carers are at the centre of our inspection. We will use as many opportunities as we can to get people involved and talk to them about their experiences of health and social care services.

We have developed an engagement framework to support all our engagement activity. The framework sets out 12 statements about positive outcomes and experiences that we will speak with people about.

More information

You can find full information about joint adult inspections:

• The Partnership guide sets out the inspection process step by step and provides all the information that partnerships need to manage their part in the inspection. 
• The Quality Improvement Framework (QIF) explains the criteria we use to evaluate quality in our inspections
• The Engagement framework provides a set of “I” statements to help us consider the experience of people who use health and social care services and their unpaid carers. It underpins all the engagement with people and unpaid carers that takes place during the inspection. 
• Our joint inspection reports can be found here.
• The record review template and record review guidance supports our reading of health, social work and social care records. The current version is used to read the records of people living with mental illness.